


The Audrey Problem

by fits_in_frames



Category: Ars Paradoxica (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 02:00:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8949262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fits_in_frames/pseuds/fits_in_frames
Summary: In which Sally makes a new friend (sort of), and references too many movies from the 1980s.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for caffeinatedwriters@tumblr for the Ars Paradoxica Secret Santa 2016! Spoilers through Episode 16 "Greenhouse".

When Esther arrives at Sally's house on a Wednesday morning, she knocks on the door, like usual. There's no answer for several minutes, so she knocks again. No answer. She knocks one more time, more concerned. She's about to pick the lock when she hears a yell from behind the house. Without hesitating, she climbs over the fence and races around back to find Sally, covered in dirt and grime, holding a shovel in the air triumphantly with one hand, and towering over a small pile of dead vines and dirt in front of her.

"Sally?" Esther pants.

Sally jumps and turns, swinging the shovel without even realizing it. She stops mid-swing when she sees who's behind her, throwing herself off balance and almost falling. She catches herself at the last moment. "Roberts, Jesus Christ."

"Sally, what the hell is happening?"

Sally puts the shovel down with a clang, sighs, and drags a weary, dirty hand over her weary, dirty face. "Come inside," she says, gesturing towards the house, "and I'll tell you everything."

She stomps inside and Esther follows, still holding a bag of groceries in her hand. She sets the bag on the kitchen table. Sally is washing her hands, but has already tracked dirt through the whole kitchen. Esther sits down without asking.

"Sorry," Sally says, wiping her face and neck with a tea towel. She sits across the table from Esther and continues, "I had...a problem with one of my plants."

Esther raises an eyebrow. "Clearly."

Sally gives her a sarcastic look. "I mean obviously, yes. But-- well-- it's hard to explain."

"Sally, you're a time-traveling physicist from the future. Since when is anything hard for you to explain?"

"No, see," Sally says, scratching at her still-grimy nose with a towel-wrapped finger, "that's easy to explain. Because I understand it, and you understand it. We get time travel. But this is...different."

"Try me," Esther says, and it's a challenge.

"Okay," Sally says, tossing the tea towel in the sink. "Let me start at the beginning."

Esther smirks and leans back. She knows how much Sally Grissom likes a challenge.

"So you know how I planted some pumpkins and everything was going fine--better than fine. The vines were great, nice and healthy. I was really proud of myself. I knew it would be a while until I had good-sized pumpkins so I just kind of left them alone. But once the pumpkins started getting big--that's when it started."

"When what started?" Esther says, unhelpfully. There's that Sarcastic Sally Look again. Esther just smiles.

"I'm a lot of things, Roberts. I'm clumsy, I'm messy, I'm not the most organized person on the planet. But I'm not forgetful. Even through all this Butterfly crap, I don't forget things easily." She shifts in her chair, clearly getting to the exciting part. "For a few days, I brought my notebooks with me into the greenhouse. Nothing crazy, just some notes I had made about different plant food formulas and stuff. And I set one of them down on the edge of one of the flower boxes while I went in the house to fill up a watering can. And when I got back--" she splays both her hands out dramatically "--it was gone. Vanished. So naturally, I look on the ground; maybe it's fallen off. It wasn't there. Maybe Archie got a hold of it. So I went outside to look for him. Couldn't find him, but when I got back." She leans back a little. "When I got back, Roberts, the notebook was back. Slightly askew, but in the same spot." She sighs. "At that moment, I probably would have done something really drastic to get my hands on a CCTV system."

"A what?" Esther interjects.

"Closed circuit television. A security system, basically. Kind of like the TAP except not actually a window back through time." She pauses, thoughtfully. "I guess I could have asked you for the TAP, now that I think about it."

Esther scoffs. "No chance in hell, Sally."

Sally grins, mischievously. "I didn't think so. Anyway, so I did a little experiment. I left the notebook in its spot and went inside again. Came back out, it was still there. But again, in a different position. So I started leaving heavier and heavier books in that spot. Just to see if whoever or whatever was taking them would be able to keep taking them. And then one morning I walk out to find the book I left in there the night before--I find it on the ground outside. It's one of my gardening books, of course, and it's open."

"Sally, this is starting to sound like a campfire ghost story," Esther says during a pause.

"I wish it was a ghost story, Roberts," Sally says gravely. "So I bend down to pick up this book and there's a little vine tip next to it. I follow that vine all the way back to the greenhouse, and what do you know, it's from one of my pumpkin plants. It wasn't outside the night before, but it was outside now. Then. It was outside then." Sally shakes her head a little. "Sorry. So I cut that one vine and throw it in my compost heap. I mean, if it's what I think it is, I want to nip it in the literal bud, right?" Sally makes an overly happy face, expecting Esther to laugh at her bad joke. Esther just rolls her eyes. "But the next time I come into the greenhouse--that vine is back! Roberts, it grew right back in a matter of hours. And _then_ ," she continues, excitedly, "I notice my bucket of Elixir plant food has less in it than before. And the bucket is right next to--you guessed it--that flower box where I left my notebook initially."

"Sally are you--are you trying to tell me you made an actual sentient pumpkin plant?"

"What? No, of course not," Sally scoffs. "I made a _strong_ pumpkin plant, which then turned itself into a _semi_ -sentient pumpkin plant with some extra Elixir! Just sentient enough to play tricks on me! I named her Audrey-Two." She beams, expecting Esther to understand. She doesn't. "You know, like in _Little Shop of_ \--that movie hasn't come out yet, has it."

It's not a question, but Esther answers anyway, with a gently teasing smile. "No, it hasn't."

Now it's Sally who rolls her eyes. "Anyway, so fast-forward--" Esther raises an eyebrow "--I mean, skip ahead to last night. I close up the greenhouse for the night, and go to bed. And at about 6 o'clock this morning, I hear this gentle tapping on the window by my bed. It's then that I realize that I forgot to leave Audrey a book. I bolt out of bed, throw on my gardening clothes, and run out to the greenhouse. Audrey has basically taken it over. She's so used to having a book to--I don't know, read? Lift? Just have? That she went all 'feed me Seymour' on me--" Esther assumes this is another reference to the aforementioned future film "--and straight up grabs onto my leg!" She leans down and hoists her leg up on the table in a very unladylike, very unsanitary fashion. Esther's mother would have been horrified. Esther herself is too stunned to say anything at all. There is, in fact, a purple bruise underneath all the dirt covering Sally's leg. She puts her foot back on the ground. "So what you saw, Roberts, was me having to wrestle Audrey out by the roots and chop her into tiny bits. I'm not proud of it, but who knows what she would have done if I hadn't done that."

Esther just stares for a moment. Then, after a long inhale, "Wow, Sally. That...that is some story."

"I know." Sally nods her head; then, slowly, breaks into a smile; and then, into a small giggle.

"Sally," Esther says, and it's almost a threat.

Sally is fully laughing at this point. "Oh man, Roberts, I got you!"

Esther throws her hands up in the air, half frustrated and half amused.

"You actually thought--" she snorts laughing "--you actually thought I had a plant monster in my greenhouse!" She wipes a tear from the corner of her eye. "Christ almighty, I had you going there."

"Did you take a 'spinning yarn' class at MIT?" Esther teases.

"No, but now I wish I had." Sally sighs, catching her breath. "But seriously, I was just taking care of a gopher problem. They were chewing on my pumpkin vines. I stopped short of going full Bill Murray in _Caddyshack_ , though." She gets up and offers to make tea. Esther accepts.

"Caddyshack?" Esther wonders aloud while Sally puts on the kettle.

"Just wait about 30 years," Sally says, still giggling to herself, and humming a song Esther doesn't know.

Esther just shakes her head, and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Plant monster shenanigan ideas gently borrowed from Wolf 359. #blessielives


End file.
